Peruvian President’s Exit Taints Rosy Image in Japan

When Alberto Fujimori was elected president of Peru a decade ago, the Japanese public was elated. The foreign-born son of Japanese emigrants had made it big on the world stage.

Surveys here ranked his election among the most exciting foreign news stories of 1990. Japanese camera crews dashed to Peru to satisfy the huge public demand for coverage. Reporters camped out at his ancestral village of Kawachi to interview his relatives, question shopkeepers and chat up local historians. Peruvian culture, music and food witnessed a boom.

Ten years later, many Japanese feel a bit cheated as they struggle to square their rather fuzzy, vaguely positive image of the Latin authoritarian with the television footage of his flight from Peru and remote-control abdication in Tokyo on Monday.

“Japanese people have had great sympathy for him--in many ways, they saw him as Japanese,” says Tetsuya Inamura, cultural anthropology professor at Aichi Prefectural University and chairman of the Japan-Peruvian Assn. “Now people feel very disappointed. This is the worst. He fled his responsibility.”

As the Japanese government anguishes over whether to let the Latin strongman stay, the case is also testing many key Japanese assumptions, namely: what it means to be racially Japanese but culturally foreign, what price Japan has paid for its embrace of Fujimori, and how it can extract itself from its rather costly obligations.

A Source of Pride in His Parents’ Homeland

Fujimori was elected at a time when Japan was being roundly criticized abroad as an economic giant but a political midget. Here, finally, was someone who shared Japan’s worldview and might expand its influence in an entirely different region.

Beyond the practical benefits was a strong emotional component. Like many people, the Japanese naturally identify with those who look like them, share the same ancestry and appear to understand their small-town values. Fujimori, who was named an honorary resident of his parents’ birthplace in Kumamoto prefecture, seemed to embody all these things.

Granted, a closer look revealed many distinctly non-Japanese qualities in the uncompromising Fujimori. But most Japanese didn’t look too closely. And soon the financial aid and investment taps were gushing. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party sent used trucks and cars to Peru as Japanese citizens raised hundred of thousands of dollars over the next several years for Peruvian hospitals, schools and social welfare programs.

Fujimori, who had campaigned on his ability to attract Japanese investment, used his parents’ homeland as a political trump card. Although Fujimori is said to speak only rudimentary Japanese, he bragged about his ability to bring Japanese companies and jobs to Peru. His campaign posters showed him in a Japanese yukata robe with a samurai sword.

And in the early years, he delivered, justifying the faith of Peruvian voters and Japanese fans. He cut Peru’s tariffs, government spending and subsidies. Within a year, inflation fell to 139% annually from an astronomical 7,650%, and the economy started growing again.

In late 1996, terrorists used those Japan ties to try to derail his government and sour his Asian benefactors. On Dec. 17, members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement seized the Japanese Embassy in Lima, Peru’s capital, in the middle of a celebration of the Japanese emperor’s birthday.

For four months behind the scenes, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials pleaded with Fujimori not to use force. He ignored them, and on April 22, 1997, while the terrorists were playing their customary afternoon soccer game, his troops attacked and killed the rebels and freed all the Japanese hostages. Many in Japan questioned the tactics, but they couldn’t argue with the results.

Recently, however, those who have watched Peru closely have become more disenchanted as Fujimori ran roughshod over the constitution and muscled his way into a third term. Allegations of human rights violations and anti-democratic tactics had grown louder globally.

But in Japan, many of these issues were not closely covered, in part because Tokyo, in contrast to Washington, chose not to confront this son of a native son.

“As questions over his handling of affairs increased, an element of embarrassment crept in,” said Takashi Kiuchi, an advisor to Shinsei Bank. “Still, Fujimori is Japanese. And among Japanese, it’s customary not to make your disputes very public.”

Nation Finds Itself in Awkward Position

Japan now finds itself in a position it hates: embroiled in an international controversy. Even worse, the issue threatens to expose to the outside world the often messy and competing claims by Japan’s many layers of government and its slow response in times of crisis.

And, in a nation that prefers to do things by the book, the question of what to do with Fujimori does not have much of a precedent. Japan has accepted only 252 refugees since 1982, none with Fujimori’s notoriety. Furthermore, Japan has previously countered global criticism about its tight borders by arguing that refugees didn’t want to settle in the country anyway. With Fujimori camped out in the country, this argument becomes a harder sell.

His status also underscores some unique Japanese issues of obligation and responsibility. Fujimori’s ancestral links to Japan--and Tokyo’s past embrace of his regime--make it difficult to toss him off the archipelago. This is particularly true if he is found to be listed on the family register in Kawachi and has legal rights in Japan as the son of a citizen.

Closely related are debts going back more than a century that extend far beyond Fujimori’s case. Many Japanese from poor, overpopulated areas of the country were lured to Peru and other Latin nations after 1890 by government-fanned reports of lush overseas fields and foreign riches. All too often they found only poverty and discrimination.

Analysts say this historical legacy in part explains the preferential treatment in jobs and education that many Peruvians, and other Latinos, of Japanese descent receive here. Turning your back now on someone from this group is considered improper.

Another worry for Japan is how to scale back the large amount of aid money and corporate investment channeled to Peru during the Fujimori years without making it look too obvious that it was tied to an individual from a particular heritage.

Many Japanese retain a good deal of sympathy for Fujimori. Television footage showed him leaving the upscale New Otani Hotel on Wednesday, destined for an undisclosed friend’s house, in a minivan--a comedown from the Mercedes he had arrived in as Peru’s president two days earlier.

For Nobuo Ishihara, Fujimori’s 72-year-old cousin, reached by telephone in Kawachi, now part of Kumamoto city, the Peruvian has gotten a bad rap. Unlike his predecessors, Fujimori is not corrupt, Ishihara said. And the human rights violations are overplayed. “People should evaluate his 10-year record,” he said. “In developing countries, you need to be a bit of a strong leader.”

Ultimately, the hardest thing to forgive for many Japanese may be Fujimori’s exit from the public stage. “People will always remember that he fled his responsibility and hid away,” said Shigeo Osonoi, director of the Latin American Studies Center at Nanzan University in Nagoya. “Honor and the samurai spirit are very important to Japanese people. So this is a great disappointment.”

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Hisako Ueno and Rie Sasaki of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.