National Agenda : Japan Looks Homeward--Toward Asia : The shifts in trade and culture are starting to affect relations with the West.

By TERESA WATANABE

Oct. 25, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

TOKYO —

From Japan’s government ministries to Tokyo’s trendy youth districts, the scent of change is unmistakable: Japan--an unquestioned ally of the United States for half a century and a passionate student of Western learning--is looking to its Asian neighbors, the East.

The end of the Cold War eased the need for security ties with Washington, and Asia’s spectacular economic ascent has intensified national debate over Japan’s fundamental interests. Should it tilt toward its Asian neighbors or stay anchored with the West? In a sense, the debate goes to the heart of Japan’s identity itself, long perched between its traditional culture and modern economic and political development.

More than a century after Meiji Restoration reformists turned West to modernize Japan--even discussing intermarriage to improve the racial stock--the identification with Asia is growing, overriding a sometimes bitter history of conflict and colonization.

Trade is exploding, growing twice as fast within the region as with the United States in the last five years. Government officials are voicing a growing desire to play a more active political role in the region and are being exhorted to do so by leaders such as Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed and Lee Kuan Yew, the former Singaporean leader.

As a result, more Japanese are beginning to assert an agenda of “Asian values” that could lead to differences with the West over human rights, labor relations and other issues.

Even the sacrosanct security relationship with the United States, a product of the American victory over Japan in World War II, is being reviewed. In a recent report to the prime minister’s office, a group of defense experts advised supplementing U.S.-Japan security arrangements with new ties to the United Nations and with Asian nations.

And among Japan’s relentlessly trendy youth, Asia is clearly in vogue. “Asia is Exciting!” the young women’s magazine Crea declared in a cover story, underscoring the heightened interest in Asian languages, food, dance and travel--even boyfriends.

“Now when the once overwhelming U.S. presence in the political and economic spheres has diminished somewhat and the Cold War has crumbled, Asia is definitely assuming greater weight in Japanese policy,” wrote Yoshibumi Wakamiya, an Asahi Shimbun editorial writer. “We may be coming to a crucial juncture that will finally straighten out the warp in Japanese views of Asia that goes back to the Meiji era.”

But the deepening ties with Asia do not necessarily mean that Japan is downgrading its relationship with America. The United States remains Japan’s single largest market and security shield, and Japanese officials vigorously stress that the ties with Asia are not being built at America’s expense.

It is “patently clear that the zero-sum arguments urging Japan to determine which is more important to its interest--the United States or Asia-- have no meaning,” Foreign Minister Yohei Kono declared earlier this month at the Shimoda Conference, an elite gathering of U.S. and Japanese scholars, politicians, journalists and business executives. Kono said the U.S. military presence, its long history in Asia and the growing economic interdependence are keys to the region’s stability and prosperity.

The conference, held in the western resort island of Awashima, devoted its agenda to Japan’s role in Asia and the impact on U.S.-Japan relations. In a move unprecedented in its 27-year history, Shimoda’s organizers invited participants from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and elsewhere in the region.

Gerald Curtis, a Columbia University political science professor who attended the conference, concurred with Kono. “The question of whether to leave Asia for the West or go back to Asia from the West is simply not the way people are thinking,” he said. “Business and political leaders are quite comfortable with the idea of maintaining intimate relations with the United States and having close relations with Asia.”

Others see a tilt coming in Tokyo’s policies. Asia’s ascent as an economic superstar and China’s emergence as an even more formidable military and political power of the future contrast with the growing image of the United States as a declining power saddled with criminals, drug addicts and lazy workers. One of Japan’s time-honored proverbs advises to “move with the powerful,” and that, to some, spells Asia.

“I believe Japanese officials and the mass media are preparing the public for a disengagement from the United States in favor of the United Nations and Asia,” argued Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and former University of California political scientist.

Johnson cites Japan’s solicitous policy toward China, the recent defense report urging new security ties with Asia and the tremendous economic resources being poured into the region as evidence.

Whether he is right or wrong, such Look East sentiments are being increasingly aired.

A current bestseller, for instance, urges Asian nations to form a regional “yen bloc,” saying that Japan can survive without America. More sensational than specific, “The Era of the Asian Yen Bloc: Farewell, America,” by nationalist writers Shoichi Watanabe and Eikan Kyu, has nonetheless sold 100,000 copies in three weeks, a phenomenal performance by Japanese standards.

Officials too are more willing to directly challenge U.S. leadership. At the recent Shimoda Conference, Japanese officials repeatedly insisted that they are becoming more assertive.

But asked how, exactly, they want to assert themselves in Asia and with the United States, they had no ready answers, conferees said.

“The Japanese are quite ready to say no, but the question is, what do you say after no? What constructive policies do you suggest? They’re not there,” said Curtis, the Columbia professor. “There is such a dearth of ideas and fresh thinking about what Japanese policies should be about anything.”

Tatou Takahama, a senior fellow with the Yomiuri Research Institute, reluctantly agreed.

“I have to admit the Japanese participants failed to provide clear answers,” he recently wrote. “It is quite unlikely that the Japanese participants will be able to come up with impressive ideas on what role Japan should play in the Asia-Pacific region . . . because the majority of the Japanese are still hoping to maintain the status quo.”

At a time when wartime suspicions still limit Japan’s political role, officials say the country’s foremost contribution in Asia should be economic, leading the region toward greater prosperity. On this score, Japan has performed spectacularly, analysts agree.

Japan is now Asia’s main source of loans, technology and foreign aid, and has provided the model of close government-business coordination that other Asian nations have successfully followed.

Since the late 1980s, Japanese manufacturers have shifted their offshore production in Asia from domestic products to those requiring higher quality for the world export market. As a result, they have passed on valuable skills in quality control and other management methods to Asian employees.

Asia now accounts for 34% of Japan’s imports and 37% of its exports, surpassing the United States in the latter category since 1991. Japanese manufacturing investment in North America plunged from $9.1 billion in 1988 to $4.1 billion in 1993 but rose in Asia from $2.3 billion to $3.6 billion during that same period.

“The most important fact of post-Cold War Asia is the degree to which it has been tied together by Japan,” said Johnson, the research institute president.

But he and Curtis argue that Japan must go beyond supplying loans, know-how and technology.

Japan’s most important role in Asia, they argue, is to offer its market as a replacement for the vast and open U.S. market to absorb the region’s products.

Japanese officials say they are doing just that. Imports from Asia grew from 28% of the total in 1985 to 34% in 1993. Moreover, the proportion of manufactured imports increased from 7% in 1980 to 41% in 1993, according to government figures.

No longer simply importing raw materials, Japan is now buying Korean steel, Taiwanese computer components, Malaysian televisions and Chinese apparel.

Johnson, however, argues that Japan is not opening its markets fast enough, nor making enough headway in cutting the morass of red tape that tends to keep out new competitors.

Japan’s strategy invariably invites comparisons with its World War II “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” campaign to free Asia from white colonialists and enrich the region--a slogan that Tokyo used to justify its own plunder and colonization. But Japan’s current activities bear important differences--not the least of which is the eager demand for them by Asians themselves.

“I believe on balance Japan is making the right move to quit identifying with Europeans or Americans as honorary whites,” Johnson said. “Japan’s beginning to find its place in Asia, and its talk of Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity--not built at the point of bayonet but on true prosperity--is as idealistic as the European Union.”

Foreign relations are trickier. Japan’s wartime deeds still rankle in Asia, inhibiting policy-makers here from trying to assert much political leadership. The most notable exception is Japan’s activities in Cambodia. Using the nation as a diplomatic testing ground, Japan sponsored the international conference on Cambodia’s reconstruction in 1992, pledged the largest amount of aid and sent volunteers to U.N. peacekeeping efforts there.

U.S. analysts are scrutinizing Japan’s diplomacy with China to watch for signs of tilt. They say the most notable sign was its disagreement with the United States over linking China’s trade benefits to its progress in human rights. Curtis said Japan’s lack of support was one reason the Clinton Administration abandoned its policy to link the two. Such behavior contrasts sharply with the past, when Japan essentially followed Washington’s dictates.

In general, most analysts agree, Japan’s new assertiveness in Asia does not appear to conflict with the United States.

“The good news for Washington is that when the Japanese decide on their own, they pretty much end up where we are,” Curtis said.

The area where the two nations still share the deepest ties is in security. The United States still guarantees Japan’s defense, but both sides are beginning to question those arrangements.

In a report for the RAND Corp.’s National Defense Research Institute last year, Francis Fukuyama and Kongdan Oh said “both the alliance and the broader U.S.-Japan relationship are experiencing a number of strains that will likely necessitate modification of the relationship.”

The end of the Cold War dissolved the mutual threat and ideological glue holding the two sides together, and the more Japan tilts toward Asia, “the more likely it is that the common sense of purpose will be lost,” the report said.

U.S. analysts posed similar questions at Shimoda, asking why the United States should continue to defend Japan and guarantee the region’s stability. Many cite U.S. economic interests as a major rationale--but only if Americans are given a fair share of the region’s growing economic pie.

The situation is beginning to invite provocative debate. “The security treaty only makes sense if it is used as a quid pro quo to blast open Japan’s market,” Johnson argued. A Japanese analyst retorted, “Any hint of looking at that kind of policy would ignite a sense among Japanese to go toward foolish isolationism or an unfavorable anti-American sentiment.”

Sophia University professor Kuniko Inoguchi, who helped compile the defense report recommending that Japan broaden its security ties, is more diplomatic. “It’s not a zero-sum game. We will keep our biggest emphasis on U.S.-Japan, but at the same time we have to get along with the neighbors,” she said. “We’ve neglected that for the last 40 years, and it’s high time we pay our respects.”

Japan’s heightened interest in Asia finds its most pleasant expression in culture, for instance the growing numbers of people here taking up the food, dance and language of other Asian countries. Japan’s image of the rest of Asia has changed drastically from the 1970s, when it was seen as a poor, remote region bout which little was known beyond the popular pandas, Kan Kan and Ran Ran, that China sent as gifts or the plastic “Hong Kong flowers” that decorated Japanese toilets.

But in the early 1980s, Asia began getting fashionable. An NHK-TV series on the old Silk Road linking China to Europe sparked interest in the vast region of Central Asia and triggered a run on books, photo albums and the like.

By the end of the 1980s, Hong Kong movies, Singaporean pop music and Southeast Asian gigolos took over.

Tomoka Seki, 25, reflects the new interest in Asia. She was initially drawn West, studying ballet and French in France for more than two years. But living there showed her the negative side of Western culture, and the constant questions about where she came from sparked an awareness of herself as Asian, she said.

Today, she studies Balinese dancing, Asian art and other aspects of the East.

“I’ve realized not just the West but Asia is also fantastic,” she said.

Researcher Chiaki Kitada of The Times Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.

Shifting Trade Winds

Asia occupies more and more of Japan’s trade while the U.S share is lagging.

Japan’s Asian Connections

On Speaking Terms

Far more Japanese workers want to learn Chinese than English. In just four years, interest in Asian languages has exploded.

Most popular languages at company-run classes, 1994:

1. Chinese

2. Vietnamese

3. Thai