Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [166]
Epimethean nostalgia for the past is a natural reaction in Japan, for many of the systems that now slow the nation down were the source of its success only a decade ago. One cannot underestimate the shock that true globalization would bring to a social system and economy like Japan's, which depends so much on being cut off from the world. Mikuni Akio writes:
Under great economic and political pressure, foreigners have been allowed into certain designated sectors of the economy [such as Nissan Automobiles and Long Term Credit Bank]. The government is finding it an expensive proposition to compensate those hit by this first taste of genuine market forces, and understandably quails at the prospect of pacifying the millions who would suffer in a full-scale opening of the economy. Opposition in Japan to further liberalization, deregulation or globalization is thus steadily gathering momentum.
So strong is the longing for the past that there is a good chance that Japan will turn reactionary. The success of the rightist politician Ishihara Shintaro, the author of the popular Japan That Can Say No series and the mayor of Tokyo, augurs for a political step backward, not forward. Ishihara and his group blame Japan's troubles on evil foreigners, especially the United States. In academia, a quiet sea change is taking place. In the decades after World War II, leftists and rightists argued heatedly over national policy, with leftists often wielding the upper hand in the control of universities. However, by the end of the 1990s the leftists were in full retreat, and nationalist thinking took over the academic vanguard. The new nationalism may prevent Japan from looking inside at what the nation has done to itself.
A popular argument among Japan watchers is that as Japan becomes more international, people's perceptions will gradually come to harmonize with the outside world. There is some truth to this, for while internationalization at the official level has largely been a conspicuous failure, millions of Japanese have traveled and lived abroad. Every organization has at least one, and maybe even dozens of people, with international experience working within its ranks.
On the other hand, it was perhaps naive to imagine that foreign travel would broaden Japanese horizons. One of the most remarkable phenomena of the 1980s and 1990s is the creation of special worlds abroad made just for the Japanese. Most Japanese tourists travel in groups, and their itinerary consists of a «package» – including attractions, hotels, and restaurants that cater only to them. In Thailand, for example, the Japanese have their own entertainment street lined with «Members Only» signs, and even their own crocodile farm, which insulates them from having to deal with Thais and tourists from other countries who visit the ordinary crocodile farms.
Recently, an interviewer questioned veteran Japanologist Donald Richie about a statement in his book Inland Sea (1971) in which he predicted that as the Japanese traveled abroad in greater numbers, they would become more like everybody else. Richie replied, «I meant that when people got out and saw how other people lived and felt, they would not be able to come back with any complacency. I was exactly wrong. I hadn't envisaged Jalpak. The Japanese go abroad in a package; they have their own crocodiles, and their own flags and their own must-see stops. This is the way the vast majority travel, and they are not touched.»
As for refugees and longtime expats leaving Japan, few will mourn their exodus. Their departure from Japanese shores serves only to remove destabilizing influences, and well-heeled «international departments» will quickly replenish the missing foreigners with new ones, better behaved and more manageable than the old. «What is in store for Japan?» asks Kamei Tatsuo, the former editor of the influential opinion journal