Letter from Tokyo

More than 50 years ago, I visited Japan for the first time. I remember only too well the images of the country at the time. But first, Manila was then the city in Southeast Asia. Our airport was in its primitive stage, just a shed off Nichols Field. The double-decked Boeing Strato Cruiser took almost the whole night to reach Tokyo and in those days, air travelers were always dressed up. We arrived in Haneda on a cool June morning and emerged from the terminal into a desolate stretch of mudflats close to the bay, then the brief ride to downtown Tokyo, wooden buildings, empty bombed out lots from the fire raids in 1945, and all over the city, like giant pins stuck on the landscape, the smokestacks of factories. Streetcars rambled in the streets, willow trees lined the Ginza. Tokyo had only one subway line – the Ginza – from Shibuya, my favorite district, to Asakusa. Soba boys went around in bicycles, balancing their noodle bowls skillfully. Even then, the obvious signs of recovery were everywhere, the disciplined people waiting for traffic signs to change. I like recalling my visit to a lighter factory – just a big room, but they were producing those exquisite lighters. The first cameras were coming out, the Nikon, an imitation of the German Contax; the Canon, a copy of the German Leica; and the Mamiyaflex, another imitation of the German Rolleiflex.

And now:

I thought I would travel light, just buy a new typewriter when I got to Tokyo where, for years, I’ve holed in isolation to write. So here I am in Tokyo, looking in vain for a typewriter in a country that is now the most electronically advanced in the world. You cannot see typewriters anymore in this giant electronics emporium called Akihabara. Not even a roll film for the old-fashioned Nikon which I also brought along. Everything is digital now.

The numbering of houses in Japan is unlike in any country. The houses are numbered chronologically in time as they are built so that two houses side by side on the same side of the street have widely divergent numbers. It was always a feat for a taxi driver to locate buildings in any given area. Thanks, however, to the police stations, the exact locations may be obtained from policemen who keep track of people–perhaps the most effective neighborhood information system anywhere in the world. Finding addresses is not a problem anymore – the taxis (and private vehicles, too) now have a tracking system aided by satellite which enables the driver to go to the exact place. Not just that – the tracking system also estimates time of arrival because it keeps tabs on traffic conditions. Once the driver has put the address into the small console in front of him, a voice tells him to turn left or right or just drive straight and once he reaches the spot, tells him, too, that this is it.

Some 10 years ago, I visited a new apartment of a friend and saw the first high-tech toilet. They are now in so many places, in hotels, in cafes. The only problem is that the instructions are in Japanese and if you can’t read, if you press the wrong button, you can have a jet of water in your face. The seat automatically opens. It is made warm in the winter, and emits a special sound to make the flushing less obvious to the outside.

Japanese scientists are known to transform almost immediately the latest discoveries into useful instruments for daily life. They revolutionized electronics with practical uses of the transistor.

They already have experimental models of buses using hydrogen. Cars that run on water – they are no pipe dream anymore. And in the works is the newest computer that will revolutionalize again this particular technology.

Behind this scientific push is massive government support, not just in the hard sciences, but in the social sciences as well.

When we arrived in Tokyo, the front page of The Japan Times had a picture of Shotaro Yachi, vice minister for foreign affairs, giving a press conference in Seoul where he has defused a stand-off with the South Korean government over disputed waters. Mr. Yachi was in Manila recently as a diplomat.

Another important development: the new Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and Japan, perhaps the most significant political development in the region in this decade. It is not just about moving military forces – in this instance, the transfer of the American marines in Okinawa to Guam. The agreement, signed in Washington in April, integrates deeper the Japanese Self Defense Forces into the US Military allowing the Japanese interoperability with the American military with "contingency planning, intelligence sharing and cooperation and cooperative international peace activities."

We visit Fussa, an hour outside Tokyo, where the Yokota airbase is located, ditto with the headquarters of the American US Army Far East Network radio station.

The huge airbase is ringed by a double fence, and so are the quarters of the American servicemen within Fussa itself. The presence of the servicemen in Fussa is negligible; you could be in any shopping district in Tokyo, with its mix of people, and a limited number of Caucasians. One reason for the Americans staying in their bases is because inside, they are self sufficient. Outside, everything is expensive, even for Americans. For instance, the flag-down rate of taxis is almost 7, the cheapest subway ticket of not more than a kilometer is 1.50.

Note for Filipinos: in all the years that the American bases are in Japan, the Japanese have paid for them. Now, the Japanese government will shoulder more than $10 billion for the transfer of the US Marines to Guam within the next couple of years.

Maverick Prime Minister Koizumi has been criticized for his staunch pro-American policies and surely he will be criticized for this treaty. But beyond the transparent objectives of the treaty, does this now imply that Japan can go beyond the limitations of its Peace Constitution and rearm? Even with the limitations of the Constitution, it already has one of the strongest armed forces in the region, bolstered further by Koizumi’s response to China’s intransigence. Does this mean that the restrictions on its naval capability will be lifted? In World War II, Japan’s navy was one of the world’s most powerful.

When Koizumi ends his term in September, he shall have been one of the rare Japanese politicians who had held the post of prime minister for so long – more than five years. He leaves behind a mixed legacy, condemned by his Asian neighbors for his insistent visits to the Yasukini shrine where Japan’s war dead – i ncluding several war criminals are listed – so much so that even in Japan, powerful newspapers like The Yomiuri have objected to such visits and suggested the building of a new shrine for the war dead. Several young Japanese politicians, following his example, have ignored such negative reaction and have visited the shrine, too.

But for all such objections, his popularity remains very high, at times exceeding the 50 percent mark. He has also brought a breath of fresh air into stuffy Japanese politics, manipulated by stodgy backdealers in cahoots with big business and big bureaucrats. He literally crippled the Liberal Democratic Party which has ruled Japan for over 50 years. He made the office of the Prime Minister the prime mover of government, bypassing the powerful factions and facilitated some reforms that have brought out the country from years of stagnant deflation. His personal style is such that many Japanese say that, after him, politics in Japan will never be again the same.

Some of his more important policies include the privatization of the giant postal service, the tightening of the public works expenditures. But his Liberal Democratic Party is in shambles – will he rehabilitate it or will he allow a strong opposition to develop as one more of his legacies to an ever changing Japan?

I cannot think of a people more homogenous, more assured of their identity and therefore, their sense of nation, than the Japanese. This monolithic, enduring nationalism, a hothouse creation of history and geography is a tremendous strength of the Japanese. On occasion, though, they subject it to lacerating scrutiny.

Five decades ago, a Japanese diplomat, retired and quite free to write as he thought, earned the ire of his countrymen with his exposé of the Japanese character – warts and all – in a book that described his people as "hairy and ugly." He excoriated his countrymen for their hypocrisy and their excessive gloss of ritual and politeness. The book sold in the millions.

Shortly after, another book likening the Japanese to the Jews was lapped up by them – it did not matter that the author turned out to be Japanese.

And yet again, an apocalyptic vision swept Japan like a massive tsunami. It was all fiction, this earthquake that sank the archipelago.

Such vast pendulum swings in the manner that the Japanese perceive themselves reveal a latent sense of insecurity behind the granite facade.

Now comes Masahiko Fujiwara who says that Japan’s very successful exploitation of capitalism is not Japanese at all. His best-selling book – more than two million copies sold – discredits Japan’s imitation of American capitalism and that the nation must revert to its old dignity – the bushido spirit. He recalls how the samurai put dignity before money.

He may have something here considering how the country was recently rocked by the hotshot entrepreneur, Takafumi Horie, who was indicted for stock manipulation and yet another entrepreneur, Murakami, who has also been indicted for insider trading.

With its economic status, Japan should be a member of the UN Security Council, that it leads in East Asia. It cannot automatically assume this leadership for the countries in the area, particularly China, have such bitter memories of Japanese recalcitrance in the past and Koizumi’s continued visits to the Yasukini shrine have not eased that emnity.

But then, Japan’s economic clout could be used to its diplomatic advantage. When Japan tightened its rein on the influx of Filipino entertainers in Japan, the Philippine government was held hostage.

China is the problem for us in Asia because it is at the stage where Japan was in the ’30s, when its military and economy were growing so fast at the behest of nationalism. Maybe rapid Chinese development will obviate that same trend. Unlike Japan, which in that same period controlled all its big industries, China’s economic development is largely controlled by foreign investors, notably the Americans and the Japanese.

One of the pleasures of stepping out with Waseda Prof. Yasushi Kikuchi and his wife Kyoko is they take the trouble of introducing us to unique places redolent of the country’s culture, not just in their ambience but in their food. Both are Philippine specialists with many connections in the Philippines. Kyoko, a Ph.D., teaches at the prestigeous Tsuda College for women. Once, we went to an antique soba restaurant in Kanda where the waitresses sing out the orders. Then this delightful Toriyoshi at the border of a huge park in Kichi-joji, its garden dominated by a phalanx of green, straight bamboos. And now, this restaurant at the Tachikawa station which serves an all-tofu dinner in such exquisite variety.

It is not just the food – it also the conversation, this time Kikuchi’s commentary on Koizumi, that the new defense treaty will cost every Japanese woman and child $250 each.

I remind him that Japan can afford it – it has, after all, the world’s second largest economy, a small country, without the resources that the United States, Brazil and China have.

He says his Honda car was imported from the United States. I tell him that Japan has benefited tremendously in the last 50 years with its partnership with America.

He insists that Japan has to have its own defense system, even its own atom bomb. Which it won’t be able to use anyway. It is doing wonderfully well under the American umbrella, but now, it must also help the United States provide security for the region. And the atom bomb – Japan has the technology – it can make one in a week if it wanted to.

I remind Yasushi just as I have reminded many of my Japanese friends that Japan’s best message to the developing world, to millions of Asians, Africans and Latin Americans, is its own experience, how this tiny archipelago, with almost no resources other than the grit of its people, has achieved such modernity within a short period – the Meiji restoration after 1886, and its brilliant recovery from the perdition of World War II.

The best way to do this is through education, through the active and persistent drive of its diplomacy in these countries where poverty and injustice prevail. Japan is now a modern Western state, with global interests and, therefore, an interest in the development and preservation of global security.

Sometime back, when Soedjatmoko, the Indonesian thinker, was president of the United Nations University in Tokyo, we had a probing discussion on this very subject, how such an institution supported solely by Japan could well be the educational beacon of such a foreign policy. Inchoate in its function as a university, I remember saying then that its president should be Japanese – a cosmopolitan humanist, and that he be guided by the best available minds, from Latin America, Africa and Asia. With these select individuals as his vice presidents, the university can then have a strong academic program on modernization, with particular focus on the Japanese experience, a continuing supply of academics from specific areas. These academics should serve for a minimum of two years and a maximum of four, with no tenure so that there will be a continous flow of such academics from outside Japan. These academics may be selected by Japanese academics themselves, with the aid of their embassies, zeroing in on individuals who have commitments to their particular countries, who would learn from Japan, but not want to stay in Japan as, indeed, so many academics enamored with the array of opportunities in Japan, often do. Not only the UN University will have such a program, but most Japanese universities should build tie-ups with institutions elsewhere; Waseda, for instance, has links with De La Salle University in Manila.

But as Kikuchi said, if foreign academics are not granted tenure in Japan these institutions will be charged with discrimination. There may have to be exceptions – academics that will not be needed in their homeland like for instance, Filipino teachers in Tagalog or any of the Filipino languages. They can stay in Japan and will not be missed.

I remind Yasushi that an opportunity for me to give Filipinos an insight to the Japanese experience came some 20 years ago when The Toyota Foundation permitted me to translate Japanese books into Tagalog; I immediately selected books that pertain to Japanese education, culture, science, the autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, one of the architects of the Meiji Restoration. Thousands of books were published under this program, and because they did not sell, these thousands were distributed free to libraries of our public school system.

After that futile search for a typewriter at Akihabara, we tried our favorite shops, Tokyu Hands in Shibuya and in Shinjuku’s Takashimaya. No, they don’t carry typewriters anymore. Why didn’t we think of it before? We finally consulted Matsuyo Yamamoto, my ever helpful Japanese translator. After several phone calls, she finally tracked down a shop in Shinjuku. Yes, they have a typewriter – Brother Wordshot. The price stunned my wife – it is four times what a similar model costs in America, manufactured in America, of course, by Brother’s American branch.

Finally, a typewriter, hence this first letter from Tokyo.

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Next week: A visit to Yasukuni