Japan From Superrich To Superpower

The year is 1992. A local conflict has closed the Strait of Malacca, blocking Japanese tankers laden with Persian Gulf oil from entering the South China Sea. The Japanese Prime Minister places a call to the White House.

“Good evening, Mr. President,” he says. “Would you consider sending the U.S. Navy to escort my ships through the strait?” Pause. The President is well aware that the request is coming from America’s biggest creditor. “Why, yes, of course,” he replies. The Prime Minister thanks him, adding, “I am certain that your help will reassure our private investors enough so that they will buy their usual share of Treasury bills at next Tuesday’s auction.”

Washington strategists have begun to envision that scenario when talk turns — as it increasingly does nowadays — to Japan’s growing influence. The very prospect of such pressure, however remote, is part of a subtle change in the way Americans view the Japanese. No longer is Japan seen simply as a tireless competitor and an endless source of high-quality goods. Japan’s successes have been so spectacular that they seem ready to burst beyond economic bounds.

At a time of constant warnings that the U.S. is in decline, Japan, above all other nations, is conspicuously on the rise. “There’s no reason that Japan won’t continue to grow,” says Yale History Professor Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. “Its economic drive is pushing it toward center stage.” Most experts agree. “The American century is over,” says Clyde Prestowitz, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration and author of Trading Places: How We Allowed Japan to Take the Lead. “The big development in the latter part of the century is the emergence of Japan as a major superpower.”

But what kind of superpower will Japan be? How quickly will the country’s economic strength turn, as it eventually may, into political muscle? How will the Japanese use that newfound might, and what are the consequences for its closest ally, the U.S.? Can Japan become a truly powerful nation without acquiring a military capability that would frighten and antagonize its friends and neighbors and violate its own constitution? Will the world see a Pax Japonica 25 years from now, or will Japan the banker form a partnership with America the policeman to create a sort of Pax Amerippon?

Europeans fret that Japan’s ascendance could diminish their own global stature. Pacific Rim nations recall Japan’s World War II aggression and occupation of their countries and half suspect that, beneath a patina of civility, the Japanese have not fundamentally changed. The U.S., the world’s No. 1 debtor nation, voices a mixture of concern and admiration. “No country is more important to our economic future than Japan,” says Democratic Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey. “You want Japan to assume more foreign policy responsibility in the world, but in partnership with the U.S. The key is to get them to assume more responsibility without getting them to rearm.”

Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita used last week’s economic summit in Toronto to showcase Japan’s growing involvement in global affairs. Takeshita unveiled a $50 billion foreign-aid package before the meeting that would make Tokyo the world’s largest donor. Japan also announced a debt-relief program for Third World countries and agreed to phase out import quotas on oranges and beef.

But the Japanese are still torn by conflicting emotions over their proper place in the sun. A new nationalism is bubbling up through the country that has little to do with old dreams of imperial conquest. Rather it is based on a pride in Japan’s achievements and a desire for other nations to recognize its status. At the same time, the Japanese are sometimes seen by outsiders as lacking clear goals for their country or any abiding sense of how to put their wealth and power to use. “There must be some ideal that we have that would appeal to mankind,” says Hideaki Kase, a former Ministry of Foreign Affairs officer and writer on security affairs. “Britain has the Magna Carta, France its Liberte. Americans have their Revolution. Even the Russians and the Chinese created socialist models to copy.”

Part of the problem is that Japan has never articulated an exportable ideology, such as democracy or Communism. As a homogeneous island people who were long cut off from other nations, the Japanese have an almost tribal sense of their own identity. “Japan has never had a foreign policy,” observes John David Morley, an expert on Japan and author of Pictures from the Water Trade. “It has had wars, it has colonized parts of Asia, but apart from that its experience in dealing with other nations is still very primitive.” Nor have many older Japanese been free of an attitude — some claim an almost racist conviction — that Japan’s uniqueness makes it impossible for others to copy its success.

The Japanese are bound by a web of mutual obligations that link every individual to every other. But this lattice of relationships has no meaning outside Japan — a fact that can profoundly distress older Japanese who venture to other lands. The lessons of a lifetime are suddenly useless: the rest of the world simply plays another game.

Now Japan is swept by debate over the merits of kokusaika, or & internationalization. Book after book on Japan’s future rolls off the presses and is stacked up in bookstores in attractive displays. Coffee shops, homes and office towers are beginning to ring with talk of new ideas. The discussions are part of a consensus-building process called nemawashi, whereby all sides of an issue are aired. Only then can agreement be reached on the proper course of action. Once the Japanese make up their minds, though, they can move very fast. The country’s astonishing growth since World War II resulted from a national resolve to rebuild the ravaged economy.

Today the discussion reflects an increasingly international-minded youth. More than 60% of Japan’s 122 million people were born after the war. Innocent of both the conflict and its aftermath, the young are less concerned with Japan’s uniqueness or other obsessions of the national psyche. They travel widely, identify with youths of other nations, and are as familiar with Michael Jackson and Budweiser beer as they are with Toyotas and Sony Walkmans.

Listen now to what many Japanese are saying. After much hesitancy and throat clearing, speaker after speaker expresses a desire for a peaceful world that builds prosperity. What raises that commonplace above banality is the obvious sincerity behind it; repeated often enough, it could almost serve as an embryonic creed for modern Japan. Takeshita talks of creating an international furusato (hometown). Speaking in Chicago after last week’s summit, he pledged Japan’s cooperation in “helping to resolve and prevent conflicts” between nations and vowed that Japan would play an international role commensurate with its financial strength.

So far, that has meant funneling funds into foreign aid. Tokyo reasons that it can increase global security by redistributing part of its wealth. “Economic aid is security aid,” concurs Gaston Sigur, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. The giving also reflects a Japanese effort to make up for past omissions. “We do believe that we have not done enough over the years,” says Ryuichiro Yamazaki, a Foreign Ministry official. Of course, like most aid donors, Japan does well by doing good: people with money in their pockets will spend it on their products.

But even giving has its problems. Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci irritated his Tokyo hosts last month by calling for increased Japanese aid to nations that he termed vital to “our collective security.” Carlucci named * the Philippines as one such country and added Turkey, Portugal, Pakistan and Afghanistan to the list. The appalled Japanese disavowed any ties between aid to the Philippines and American interests. Filipinos, however, scarcely doubt that recent Japanese donations have been partly aimed at inducing Manila to renew the leases on U.S. bases on favorable terms.

Japan is also growing more active on the diplomatic front. On a Middle East tour last week, Foreign Minister Sosuke Uno became the first Japanese Cabinet minister to visit Israel; heavily dependent on oil imports, Japan had long snubbed Israel to keep favor with the Arab states. In early June the Japanese offered to mediate a Vietnamese withdrawal from Kampuchea.

Tokyo now plans to dispatch a civilian to be a member of the U.N. peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan — the first time a Japanese will participate in such an operation. Immediately after Moscow announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan, Takeshita pledged $5 million to finance U.N. efforts there and promised to send workers to help transport refugees and rebuild telephone lines. When Hiroshi Nakajima moves up to head the World Health Organization next month, he will become the first Japanese to lead a major international organization. Though Japan would welcome an invitation to become the sixth permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, Tokyo remains acutely embarrassed by its failure in 1978 to win the nonpermanent Asian seat on the council.

But many qualified Japanese seem reluctant to take jobs with international groups lest they slip a rung on the competitive career ladder at home. Though Japan buys about half the bonds issued by the World Bank, for example, few Japanese can be found in key positions there. The Japanese Finance Ministry, in fact, has been forced to set quotas of young staffers that Japanese banks must send to such international institutions.

Memory is a constant constraint on Japanese actions: neither the overwhelming majority of Japanese nor their neighbors want the country to become a military power again. “Everyone would be a little afraid,” says Nimit Nontaponthawat, chief economist at Thailand’s Bangkok Bank. “We still can’t trust the Japanese 100%.” Observes Reinhardt Drifte, a leading European expert on Asian security affairs: “We should consider very carefully when we ask the Japanese to shoulder a greater defense burden. I’m worried that one day people will wake up and discover that a major military power has been created in the region.”

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are already formidable — at least on paper. By 1990, when a five-year rebuilding program ends, the forces will have 180,000 troops, 1,205 tanks, 163 F-15 fighter planes, 100 antisubmarine warfare planes and 16 submarines. Tokyo will have more frigates than Britain. All that firepower is designed to repel a limited attack before U.S. help arrives. Since such an attack could come only from the Soviet Union, the Japanese forces could serve as a critical line of defense if a conventional U.S.-Soviet conflict spilled over to Asia.

Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution, written with U.S. guidance, renounces war and the “threat or use of force” to settle international conflicts. That has led to endless discussions whenever new hardware is considered. “The Japanese have great debates over what is an offensive and what is a defense weapon, such as over-the-horizon radar,” says Nathaniel Thayer, director of Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. “It is like a theological dispute in the Middle Ages.”

Last year the Japanese lifted their self-imposed limit of spending no more than 1% of their GNP on defense. But Tokyo has not strayed far from that guideline; the 1988 defense budget accounts for 1.013% of GNP. The U.S. Congress voted overwhelmingly last year to urge Japan to triple its defense spending, to 3% of GNP. The idea appeals to many Americans: the U.S. spends about 6% of GNP on defense, and part of that goes to protecting Japan from possible nuclear and conventional attacks. But Carlucci said in Tokyo that he saw no need for “dramatic leaps” in Japanese defense spending. He added: “I would not know how to tell them how to spend it within the roles and missions we have agreed upon.”

For its part, Japan now pays 40% of the annual $6 billion cost of keeping 60,000 U.S. troops on Japanese soil, a marked improvement since 1980, when the U.S. picked up nearly the entire bill. But further initiatives may be limited. When the Persian Gulf conflict threatened Japanese oil shipments last year, Tokyo could not launch an effective response. Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone reportedly wanted to send patrol ships to protect Japanese vessels but backed down under heavy domestic pressure. Tokyo settled instead for such moves as increased financial support for U.N. peace-seeking efforts and aid to Omani farmers in the embattled region.

$ Some Japanese argue that even if the country wanted to become a military superpower, it could not. They contend that the country is physically too small and is too easily susceptible to bombing and blockade. On the other hand, some Japanese believe that the day may come when they will have no choice but to bolster their forces. “The Japanese are pragmatic people,” says Kase. “If the Americans withdraw and the Philippines or Korea goes Communist, we could consider it.”

A U.S. pullout from Japan, however, is highly unlikely. Along with Britain and Israel, Japan is the junior partner in one of the U.S.’s few truly special relationships. The two nations engage in ventures ranging from joint development of a $6.5 billion jet fighter known as the FSX to intelligence gathering on North Korean radicals in advance of the Seoul Olympics. “There will continue to be a tremendous mutual dependence between the U.S. and Japan,” says Historian Edwin Reischauer, author of The Japanese Today and former U.S. Ambassador to Tokyo. “If they turned uncooperative it would be a disaster for us, but it would also be a disaster for them.”

Two cases in point. Before the Reagan Administration offered a new medium- range nuclear missile proposal to the Soviet Union in 1986, the White House sent retired General Edward Rowny to clear it with Tokyo. The Japanese were horrified by a provision that would have left some Soviet SS-20 missiles in Asia within striking distance of Japan. When Rowny reported back to Washington, Tokyo’s objections helped kill the plan. The Asian missiles will be dismantled under the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev last December.

During last October’s stock-market crash, Japan advised its investment houses to hold their shares in U.S. companies. The restraint helped keep the collapse from becoming more devastating than it was. Japan performed a similar service in March 1987 when the dollar went into a free fall. In a two-pronged effort, Tokyo fund managers held their U.S. securities, while the Bank of Japan bought dollars to stem the slide. The bank’s U.S. currency holdings grew from $1 billion to $15 billion.

Yet a new sourness has crept into U.S.-Japanese relations that goes beyond the familiar Japan-bashing by Washington and protestations of innocence by Tokyo. Americans felt betrayed last year when Toshiba Machine Co. illegally sold sensitive defense technology to the Soviet Union. At the same time, U.S. worries over signs of an American decline easily shade into bitterness against a Japan whose wealth seems to dwarf its responsibilities to the rest of the world. For their part, many Japanese have wearied of incessant U.S. nagging about trade issues and now express some satisfaction over the image of a bumbling Uncle Sam.

In the past year, Tokyo has spurred consumer demand at home and relied less on exports to fuel its economy, thus blunting charges of predatory trading practices. But Japan continues to refuse to allow the yen to be used as an international reserve currency, a move that would help protect nations that trade with Japan against wide foreign-exchange swings.

But it is not just Japan that needs to face up to the realities of its increasing power. The U.S. must encourage Japan’s participation in world affairs, consulting its leaders more frequently on foreign events, insisting that the next president of the World Bank be Japanese, perhaps even campaigning for a permanent seat for Tokyo on the U.N. Security Council. While the World Bank has always been headed by an American, that tradition makes little sense at a time when the Japanese are the largest investors in the bank’s bonds.

Ultimately, there are limits to how far Japan can advance as a superpower, and limits to how far the U.S. can retrench. Japan cannot assume a major military role against the opposition of its neighbors and most of its own citizens. Nor can the U.S. abandon the position it has occupied for the past 40 years as the world’s only military and economic superpower. No other nation has the capability to replace Washington as the West’s chief guarantor of prosperity and peace.

Global security requires more than missiles and warplanes: it also requires solvency and a sense of mission. Since World War II, Japan has enjoyed the protection of the U.S. and the freedom to grow at its own pace and in its own way. “It has really been very convenient and comfortable,” says Paul Kennedy. “They like the idea of things being as they are.” But Japan the protege is on the verge of becoming Japan the equal partner, and how Tokyo and Washington handle that relationship will affect the economic well-being and security of the world well into the next century.