An Emissary Opens a Window on Tokyo

By reputation Japanese diplomats are legendary negotiators but terrible interviews. Many journalists would rather interview their mother-in-law than the self-contained Tokyo official. Nevertheless, I invited Shotaro Yachi, Japan’s new consul general in Los Angeles, to lunch to sound him out about those campaign contributions to the Democratic Party from Indonesia and Korea and other issues. Yachi, a veteran of assignments in Europe and Washington--many Asian governments post their top people here--definitely looked the part of the big-time diplomat; it was only afterward that I realized why he is also a happy one. For the first time in his memory, he is able to observe a raging controversy in relations between Asia and America, and Japan isn’t even remotely in the spotlight.

How delightful, avers Yachi, for it’s the melancholy task of the Japanese diplomat abroad to be ever alert for anti-Asian and anti-Japanese sentiment. Yachi can’t forget the most difficult and emotionally trying assignment of his career: when he was assigned to his country’s Washington embassy between 1987-92--”the height of all the Japan-bashing in America,” as he recalls. This, of course, is the Japanese perspective. The American view then was that it was time--rather high time indeed--for Japan to open its domestic markets to U.S. businesses and products.

Yachi surprised me by wading into the Asian campaign-contribution brouhaha after only the gentlest prodding. He wondered whether the controversy over the mysterious Indonesian and Korean campaign “gifts” to the Democratic National Committee would have loomed so large in the U.S. outrage department had all that dough oozed out of non-Asian countries. “What if it were British money?” he asked, smiling. He lets the thought drift off, like so much cigarette smoke. Even so, Yachi agreed that contributions of this size from abroad were inherently problematic and that the American media was right to raise questions. “In Asia, when you give that kind of money, you expect something in return,” he said. “It’s not charity.”

If so, then aren’t Asian American organizations here crying wolf by claiming that the current controversy tars all Asian American contributions with the brush of illegality, not to mention anti-patriotism? Aren’t some Asian American groups perhaps opening themselves up to questions if they give the unintentional impression that they quarrel with the basic premise of the scandal, which is that money from abroad has no rightful place in a U.S. election? Said one U.S. foundation head to me last week: “I do think they’re making a tactical mistake with their complaints.”

To this, Yachi offered that Asian American groups might sometimes be too quick to take offense at any slight. But then he recalled the memory of Vincent Chin, the Chinese American man who was beaten to death in 1982 by Detroit auto workers mistaking him, in their blind fury over Japan’s auto successes, for an ethnic Japanese. This is not something, suggested Yachi, that’s easy to forget.

How is America doing in Asia? Yachi’s reply pleasantly surprised me for its candor. Overseas, he says, the United States is the modern world’s only “benign imperialist.” America’s postwar effort to rebuild the Japan that it crushed in World War II was an extraordinary and virtually unprecedented gesture that history will never forget. At the same time, he believes, America is not at ease with Asia except when Asia is needy of America and therefore can be kept in its place. “It is just my personal feeling, but it was only when Japan got to be an economic equal that the anti-Japan bashing got serious. I think you like us better when you are helping lift us up rather than when we are on the same level and can compete as equals.”

To lighten things up, I suggested that the consul general might find his tour in California less trying than the one in Washington. “How’s that?” he asked, raising skeptical eyebrows. Well, I said, for two recent months this year, China’s trade advantage over the U.S. was even greater than Japan’s. Wouldn’t Tokyo be thrilled if China replaced Japan on American politicians’ bashing hit-list? “Ah, yes,” he said. “I would just love to enjoy an assignment where people tried to understand one another, not hate.”

In Asia, wooden Japanese diplomacy has managed to unite ethnic Chinese everywhere against Tokyo’s territorial claim over some disputed islands, in the process resurfacing deep worries and old memories about Japan throughout the region. And, the rising Sino-U.S. trade gap notwithstanding, serious economic tensions with Washington remain: Japan still must open its markets more.

One devoutly hopes that Yachi’s own personal openness is a promising portent of latent national attitudes back home.