Asians in coming to Japan. When he decided to pursue higher education in Japan, his family was bitterly opposed. «Japan is where poor and ignorant people go,» his parents said. This reminded me of my two groups of friends in Thailand. One consists of farmers in a poor village built on stilts in the rice paddies of northern Thailand, where I often travel on vacation. A surprising number have a sister in Japan or dream of going to work in Japan. My other group of friends are cosmopolitan Bangkok dwellers, affluent, and destined to lead Thailand's big businesses and banks. They travel to the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, or Australia. Japan is almost completely off their horizon.
Why is this? One reason is that Japan, while maintaining a competent standard in many industries, and intellectual or artistic pursuits, does not lead the way in any single field. Nobody would come to Japan to study the leading edge. This is especially true for university education, which, as we have seen, has not been a serious priority for Japan. All the effort went into grade school and high school. As a result, universities do not offer programs that can compete at an international level. When Asiaweek did a cover story in May 2000 on MBA schools, only five Japanese universities made it into the top fifty in Asia, and none into the top ten; they were outclassed by MBA schools in Australia and in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea. And this was in East Asia, where MBA schools are relatively new and still at a disadvantage to the West. On a world scale, Japan's graduate schools simply fall off the list.
Nor does Japan's supposedly advanced lifestyle appeal much to middle- or upper-class Asians. «To many Southeast Asians living here, Japan is the poorest country in the world – in terms of lifestyle,» saysYau-hua Lim, an Indonesian of Chinese ancestry living in Tokyo. «The Japanese have such pathetic lives. They may think Indonesia is a poor country, but we have larger houses, we can afford a car and a maid. It's easy to go to the beach on weekends. After living in Tokyo, my concept of rich and poor has really changed.»
Who comes to Japan from Asia? Menial laborers, less qualified or poorer students dependent on Ministry of Education handouts, and low- to mid-level employees of Japanese multinationals sent there to study for a short time. The most promising students usually do not come to Japan, or if they do they soon leave; over time, this will surely have an effect on Japan's international role.
Meanwhile, in the place of real internationalization, Japan abounds with Dogs and Demons-type events and programs designed to give the appearance that admiring foreigners are flocking there. Towns and organizations spend huge amounts to host conventions in Japan, and the speeches at these conferences are given prominent space in the media. Japanese magazines regularly feature earnest advice from overseas experts. Living here, one sees token Japanese-speaking foreigners on almost every variety show. Most famous of such programs is the wildly popular TV show Strange Things About the Japanese, hosted by comedian Beat Takeshi, in which a panel of foreigners, fluent in Japanese, debates a Japanese audience and one another with a great deal of sound and fury. The program has a positive side in that it introduces citizens from many countries conversant in Japanese – something new to most viewers. On the other hand, the program is essentially comedy, tending to underscore the position of foreigners as freaks within the society: there is no moderation, and the debate consists mostly of vociferous sound bites shouted by people with plaques around their necks reading «South Korea,» «France,» «Benin,» etc. Reporter Howard French points out, «Although it may open windows on other worlds for its viewers, for some the zoolike aspect of the program, with its raucous, inconclusive debates, might almost seem to advertise Japan's conservative virtues. For all the giddy freedom of foreigners, the disorder subtly recommends the tranquillity of a uniform society governed firmly by rules understood by all.» The speeches, advice, and television debates look and feel exotic, but they have little to do with real involvement by foreigners in Japanese business or culture. It's the voice of Hal again, reassuring everyone that Japan is indeed international.
Considering Japan's stalled internationalization, we come back to the principle of Wakon Yosai, «Japanese spirit, Western technology,» the rallying cry of the Meiji Restoration from which Japan has never deviated. Fukuzawa Yukichi, a pioneer early traveler to Europe in the 1850s, wrote a widely read book about his experiences, in which he described his puzzlement upon discovering that foreigners were free to buy land in the Netherlands. «If a foreigner buys land, doesn't that mean that he could build a castle or a military fort on it?» he asked. That thought hadn't occurred to his Dutch friends, but something like it has never faded from the minds of the Japanese public. There is a fear that allowing foreigners entry into the nation's life would give them terrifying power. And so they have been kept at arm's length.
As we have seen in Japanese education, an attitude of wariness, if not fear, toward foreigners is imparted in the schools. Hence the refusal of many people to rent homes or apartments to foreigners, or the appearance of signs on bathhouses warning them to stay out. The Japanese are so cut off from meaningful contact with people from other countries that they are unaware of ethnic or national sensitivities, as may be seen in the stream of racial slurs made by leading politicians. In May 2000, Ishihara Shintaro, the mayor of Tokyo, publicly attacked Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chinese living in Japan, saying, «Atrocious crimes have been committed again and again by sangokujin [a derogatory term for foreigners] who have illegally entered Japan. We can expect them to riot in an earthquake.» He was referring to the notorious aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, when in fact the opposite happened: angry Japanese mobs rounded up and murdered thousands of Koreans. The important thing to note about this slur was that Ishihara refused to retract it, and that Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's major daily newspapers, criticized not the governor but the outcry in the media. Ishihara remained more popular than ever, with more than 70 percent of the callers to the city office supporting him.
The lack of foreigners in Japan is not accidental; it results from laws and social frameworks especially designed to keep them out, or, if they are allowed in, to hold them on a very short leash. Bureaucrats restrict the import of goods from overseas, the media (newspapers, cinema, and television) portray Japan as the victim of dangerous foreigners, and business cartels raise high barriers to prevent outsiders from gaining a foothold. Internationalization in Japan is a concept at war with itself, for no matter how much lip service is paid to internationalization, the country's basic policies have been to keep Japan closed.
Plutarch, commenting on Lycurgus, said, «He was as careful to save his city from the infection of foreign bad habits, as men usually are to prevent the introduction of a pestilence.» Such is Japan. In the upper echelons of government and business, though one might find one or two men who did a stint at graduate school at Stanford or perhaps taught at Harvard in an exchange program, there is no one in a position of influence whose mind was shaped abroad at a young age.
The Ministry of Education, having by the end of the century fired all the foreign teachers at national universities who had longtime careers in Japan, and bankrupted the American colleges established in Japan during the 1990s, can breathe easy. It has successfully protected Japan against the «pestilence of foreign bad habits.» Closing the door to foreign influence on education is one of the biggest drags on real change, for with business and bureaucratic leaders all educated to have exactly the same mind-set, new ideas can rarely gain the ears of those who are in power. A truly different point of view cannot reach the top.